On Saturday, Jan. 20, the Brandeis Judges men’s and women’s track and field teams traveled to Medford, Massachusetts to compete in the Tufts Branwen Smith-King Invitational hosted by Tufts University. The women’s team finished the invitational in fourth place with 62.5 points, while the men’s team finished seventh with 28 points. Both the men’s and women’s team members earned a high number of personal records (PRs) throughout the day’s events.
On the women’s side, Brandeis saw a victory early on in the 4×200-meter relay event. The team of Olivia Zarzycki ’24, Hannah Bohbot-Dridi ’25, Shaniece Nugent ’26 and Kirsten Man ’25 scored first place in the event with a total time of 1:48.32, edging an extremely close win of 0.1 second. The women’s triple jump event saw four Judges in the top seven scorers, with Nugent winning with a new PR of 11.29 meters. Additionally, Sophie Segal ’27 took sixth—also breaking her PR—with 10.06 meters and Alisha Anderson ’26 placed seventh with yet another PR of 10.3 meters. In the weight throw event, Emma Liu ’26 broke her PR with a throw of 13.44 meters—an improvement of 0.56 meters over her last PR. With this, Liu placed 11th in the University Athletic Association ranking.
In the women’s 60-meter dash, Nugent took another win and another PR with a time of 8.45 seconds, with Hailey Crane ’25 in second with a PR time of 8.87 seconds. The women’s 3,000-meter (3K) run saw Zada Forde ’25 take 12th place with a time of 10:47—21 seconds quicker than her previous 3K time of 11:08. The rest of the Brandeis runners filled the 14th- to 17th-place spots. Among them were Shayna Zavell ’27 and Kyra Au ’25, who both broke PRs: Zavell finished 14th with a time of 11:26 and Au finished 15th with a time of 11:32. Lastly, the mile run saw Sadie Harrow—in her first collegiate mile—earn a PR with a time of 5:31. Harrow finished in 11th place, just behind Ella Warkentine ’26 who finished 10th with a time of 5:28—a team season best.
On the men’s end, the PRs continued to run aplenty. In the long jump event, Lin Lin Hutchinson ’25 overtook his PR by 0.53 meters with a distance of 5.47 meters, while TJ Showstead ’26 broke his own PR by 0.43 meters with a distance of 5.32 meters. Showstead continued to surpass PRs in the 60-meter hurdles, earning a time of 8.96 seconds in the preliminaries—with this, he edged his previous PR by only 0.1 seconds.
In the men’s 3K, Hugh Licklider ’27 placed third in his first collegiate 3K with a time of 9:01. Willem Goff ’24 broke his PR by 10 seconds, placing fourth with a time of 9:05, followed closely by Henry Nguyen ’24, who placed fifth with a time of 9:08—a 13-second PR. Finally, in the men’s 800-meter race, Jonathan Wey ’27 achieved a strong third-place finish with a time of 2:02. This was Wey’s first time competing in this event at the collegiate level, and his time was only three seconds away from his high school PR.
Next, the Judges will travel to UMass Lowell on Jan. 26 to compete in the Riverhawk Invitational.
Editor’s note: Sports editor Calli Morvay ’26 did not participate in the writing or editing of this article.
